In fact, blockchain’s decentralized nature presents many entrepreneurs with a difficult choice: build a decentralized system but forego a solid revenue stream, or create a centralized business model that leads to real profits but avoids the very aspect of blockchain that makes it so disruptive.

Fortunately, there is a happy medium: generally decentralized efforts that retain some centralized component that affords the creator of the platform with a mechanism for collecting transaction fees or otherwise cash in on their efforts.

In fact, while blockchain is still largely in the proof of concept phase, the hotbed of innovation that is the blockchain community is shaking loose a number of disruptive, yet rational business models – rational in the sense that they offer a solution to a business problem that customers will pay for.

The variety of such blockchain businesses with paths to profitability is striking. In addition to the two such vendors in last week’s article, here are four more that illustrate breadth of innovation the blockchain marketplace is bringing to potentially profitable business ideas.

Blockchain Expo, Olympia, LondonJason Bloomberg

Product Authentication to Combat Counterfeiting

Counterfeit products are an exploding problem worldwide, as illicit manufacturers get better at creating knockoffs of everything from sneakers to soy sauce. Brands suffer due to lost revenues and hits to their reputation, and consumers must deal with quality and safety issues.

Seal offers a blockchain-powered product authentication and services platform that leverages dynamic near-field communication (NFC) chips. NFC chips are similar to RFID tags, only with a shorter range that requires a consumer to touch their phone to the product they wish to verify.

The chips uniquely identify the individual item and offer robust encryption to thwart counterfeiting. Unlike Arianee, a vendor I discussed in my last article that relies upon serial numbers, the brands that use Seal’s platform must incorporate the NFC chip into their manufacturing process.

This requirement is unquestionably a challenge Seal must overcome. Each chip is inexpensive but still adds a cost that makes Seal most suitable for luxury and other pricey items.

Its blockchain platform promises a token economy that encompasses brands, retailers, as well as consumers, who should be able to use tokens to purchase products. The brands pay Seal for the digital certificate of authenticity each product receives, as well as the ability to track the ownership of each product as it changes hands.

Blockchain for C# Fans

The Bitcoin blockchain was written in C++, and today’s blockchain coders either use that venerable but difficult language or any of a number of more modern choices, including Java, Python, Go, and Solidity, a JavaScript-like language developers favor for Ethereum smart contracts.

However, many enterprises are lacking in the necessary language skills. For enterprises that favor Windows environments, Stratis has stepped up to the plate. This company has written its blockchain from the ground up in C# on
Microsoft Windows Server to give enterprises with C# skills a quick leg up on their blockchain implementations.

As a result, Microsoft Visual Studio is the ideal tool for building on a Stratis blockchain – a mature tool that retains its popularity in many large organizations.

Stratis also offers professional services for those organizations who lack the staff or blockchain expertise to go it on their own.

Stratis customers can deploy the platform on their own or leverage the company’s cloud-based ‘blockchain-as-a-service’ – an innovative approach to enterprise blockchain that combines the security and control of private blockchains with the flexibility and scalability of the cloud.

Reserving Real Estate Internationally

Let’s say you find a darling short-term rental on a sun-drenched Greek island, perfect for your vacation. You drop the broker an email, and he replies with a pdf document for you to fill in – in Greek.

Assuming it’s Greek to you, you face several challenges: navigating the language itself, of course, but also the intricacies of a legal agreement in a country with unfamiliar laws. And then, of course, you also wonder whether the broker is on the level or simply a scam artist who simply wants to abscond with your deposit.

PrepayWay plans to address such challenges with a blockchain-based platform for making the international real estate reservation process simple, transparent, and secure.

A blockchain that provides for enforceable contracts for every party involved in such real estate deals is clearly a sweet spot for the technology – but much of the company’s value proposition is in the legal templates it provides.

These templates cover all the vagaries of local laws and also appear in multiple languages, allowing parties to read legally identical contracts in their own language.

Blockchain platform and legal templates aside, at its core, PrepayWay is in truth an escrow company – a trusted intermediary that holds funds as various parties work out the contractual details. This function along with the distributed transactionality of the blockchain positions PrepayWay to be an early blockchain success story.

Decentralized Advertising Marketplace

The past two decades have seen two disruptive evolutions of the advertising marketplace, first with the rise of web-based advertising, followed by the programmatic advertising we’re familiar with today.

In fact, today’s digital advertising world centers on complex bidding processes as advertisers battle to place ads on publishers’ web sites, mobile apps, and other digital touchpoints.

The current system, however, faces several challenges. Ad fraud in its various forms plagues the industry. Ad blockers challenge ads’ value proposition. And intermediaries take a large cut for their troubles.

Varanida hopes to disrupt this status quo with its blockchain-based decentralized advertising marketplace. The Varanida platform serves three main constituencies: advertisers, publishers, and consumers.

Consumers then tokens by viewing ads that they can use to purchase premium content from publishers. In fact, the platform gives consumers more power over ads than today’s programmatic technologies offer, encouraging advertisers to up their game by creating ads consumers would prefer to view.

Over time, improved, increasingly customer-centric ads will transform many advertisers into publishers in their own right, a disruption even more exciting than Varanida’s decentralized platform.

As with other blockchains that support high-volume, real-time transaction processing, Varanida’s platform actually consists of two levels: the slower blockchain that essentially acts as an immutable settlement platform, and a faster transactional platform that handles the ads.

This transactional platform also makes it easier for Varanida to take a cut of each transaction – a smaller cut than traditional programmatic ad platforms require due to the increased efficiencies that blockchain brings to the table, but more than sufficient to place Varanida into the rational business model camp.

The Common Theme: Real Business Models

Even though the four examples in this article are quite diverse in their purpose, they all include a reasonable mechanism for generating revenues – reasonable in the sense that the value they provide justifies the amount they can charge.

With blockchain, it’s easy to get lost in all the hype around decentralization and token economies – but without a way of making money, such endeavors aren’t really businesses at all. You know what I call a project that doesn’t have a way to make money? A hobby. Be sure you recognize the difference.

Intellyx publishes the Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster, advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives, and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, Microsoft is an Intellyx customer. None of the other organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. The author does not own, nor does he intend to own, any cryptocurrency. Image credit: Jason Bloomberg.

Jason Bloomberg is a leading IT industry analyst, Forbes contributor, keynote speaker, and globally recognized expert on multiple disruptive trends in enterprise technology and digital transformation.